Contract said no feelings. His lips broke the rules. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Clause Seven

In his office she drafts the contract, he marks it up, clause seven bans feelings and clause nine bans sex, and when they sign the chairwoman's car is already downstairs.

I wrote the contract in two hours, at my own desk, with the door shut and my phone face down.

It ran three pages.

I called it the Personal Appearance Agreement, because "Fake Girlfriend Contract" would not survive a deposition.

I printed it, stapled it and walked it down the hall at five.

Weston was standing at the window of the corner office with his tie off and his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

"You said ninety days," he said without turning around.

"The Founders' Gala is in ninety days. The chairwoman signs there or she doesn't sign."

"So it's ninety days." He turned. "Read it to me."

"You can read."

"I like to hear you make a rule."

I sat in the chair across from his desk and put the pages on my knee.

"Clause one. For ninety days, Delaney Cross will appear in public as Weston Stratton's girlfriend."

"Clause two. She lives in his penthouse guest room, so the doorman, the neighbors and the photographers all see the same story."

"Guest room," Weston said. "Fine."

"Clause three. She keeps her office, her title and her salary. Nobody at Stratton & Co. is told, including your uncle and Hannah."

"Hannah will know in a day."

"Then Hannah will keep it, because she likes me more than you."

He almost smiled. "Go on."

"Clause four. Physical contact in public only when a camera or the delegation is present. Hands, a kiss on the cheek, one kiss on the mouth if the room needs it."

"Who decides if the room needs it?"

"I do."

He rubbed his jaw. "Clause five?"

"Money. You don't pay me and I don't take anything. Six says we give the press one agreed story."

"I won't skim them."

"Clause seven."

I stopped there.

The next line was one I had typed and deleted twice, then typed again.

"No feelings," I read. "Neither party develops, expresses or acts on romantic feelings for the other. This is a business arrangement."

Weston did not say anything for a moment.

"You put that in a contract," he said.

"I put everything in a contract. It's what I'm for."

I had written clause seven for myself.

I did not say so, and I kept my eyes on the page.

"Eight is about the cameras. Nine is no sex."

"Nine is no sex," he repeated. "Why does that need a clause?"

"Because you are Weston Stratton, and I have read your tabloid file."

"You have a file on me?"

"Legal keeps a file on you. It's four hundred pages. I've read it twice."

That was true, and it was not the reason.

I think he heard the difference.

"Ten is confidentiality. Eleven is termination. Either of us can end this with twenty-four hours' written notice. Twelve is the signature block."

"Give me the pen."

He came around the desk and leaned over my shoulder to read the pages against my knee.

He smelled like cedar and cold air from the terrace.

His forearm brushed my arm when he took the pen out of my fingers.

I did not move my arm, and neither did he.

He crossed out one word in clause four and wrote another beside it.

Then he tapped clause seven with the back of the pen.

"Mutual," he said. "Fine. I can follow it."

"Good."

"Can you?"

"I wrote it, Weston."

"That isn't what I asked."

I looked up.

He was close enough that I could see where he had missed a spot shaving.

I took the pages back.

"There's one more thing," I said. "Leland told me this morning he put my name forward for general counsel. The board votes soon."

Weston went still.

"Don't," he said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't take it. Not from him."

His voice was flat, and nothing like his voice with the delegation.

"That's the job I've been working for since I was twenty-five."

"I know what it is."

"Then you know you don't get a vote."

For a second I thought he might say something else.

Instead he took the pen and signed his name at the bottom of the third page in one hard line.

"Sign it," he said. "We have a dinner."

I signed under him, in blue ink, a little lower than I meant to.

It was ten to seven.

His phone buzzed on the desk.

He glanced at the screen and held it out to me without a word.

It was a text from Leland.

Heard the happy news. Dinner's on me when it's all over. I always liked her for you.

I read it twice.

Nobody outside this room knew we had signed, and I had not told a soul.

"The interpreter," I said. "One of her people. Someone talked."

"Probably," Weston said.

He took his phone back and slid it into his pocket.

He looked at the door and not at me.

"The car is downstairs."

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